Are these the tweets of an informant? The Twitter account of "The Real Sabu" had this to say yesterday. A final tweet overnight, ahead of arrests of alleged members of hacking group LulzSec, says in German: The revolution says I am, I was, I will be."
The real nasty hacking targeting feds may stop, at least for a while, Terban said. "In general I think it's going to break the back of the AntiSec mentality of going around and hacking things and dumping data," Terban said. "Now they've all learned that they can't necessarily just skate and get away with it."

Josh Corman, director of security intelligence for Akamai who has been studying the hackers, said it was too soon to tell if this is going to hurt the Anonymous movement long term or help it.

"It may improve their operational security" to keep identities more hidden in case of infiltrators, he said.

Mitnick knows from first-hand experience just what hacker groups like Lulz and Anonymous are up against. One of the most celebrated early hackers, Mitnick got busted on hacking charges after leading the FBI on a goose chase about 25 years ago.

"If you poke the tiger, eventually the tiger is going to bite you," Mitnick said. "When you screw with law enforcement, they take it personal--and these guys were doing that, compromising police Web sites and publishing home addresses and phone numbers."

Recounting his personal chronology of being on the lam, Mitnick recalled that he kept his circle of acquaintances to one or two hacking partners at most, and he still wound up getting informed upon.

"The larger your circle the greater your risk...If I was a member of Anonymous, which I'm not, I would be really concerned about the same thing happening to me. How many people know my real world identity?"

Below is a timeline of major LulzSec events. Dates may be approximate as it is often difficult to determine exactly when a network was compromised:

About the author

Elinor Mills covers Internet security and privacy. She joined CNET News in 2005 after working as a foreign correspondent for Reuters in Portugal and writing for The Industry Standard, the IDG News Service, and the Associated Press. E-mail Elinor.
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